In high school wrestling, boys can now take down, pin and perform half-Nelsons on girls — and the girls can do the exact same things to them.

Moore lives it. A cheerleader when she's not on the mat, she just finished her second wrestling season for the Falcons.

Heavily active in community service in Shasta Lake, Moore fits no stereotype.

She's one of hundreds of girls and young women who've grappled on the mat in the United States since the movement gained momentum in the late '90s.

Basketball, soccer, tennis and many other sports are gender-separate, consistently keeping boys and girls on different fields, hardwoods and tracks.

In the same high school ranks, though, the combat sport — wrestling — is incorporating both genders, and has been doing so for a while.

Brief history

Women have been participating in Greco-Roman wrestling since, well, Spartan girls were wrestling in the time of the Roman Empire.

However, a wide acceptance of competitive women in high school wrestling didn't really kick in until the late 1990s.

The past 20 years of girls' and women's wrestling in the United States was summed up thoroughly by the man now, in large part, at the forefront of it — U. S. Girls' Wrestling Association Director Kent Bailo.

In 1997, Michigan became the first state to host women's high school state championships — headed by his association, Bailo said.

From there, a national championship was established in 1998, and Texas and Hawaii started state championships in 1999.

Washington added it in 2003-04, and this year Massachusetts brought on girls' wrestling as a state-sanctioned high school varsity sport. California has official tournaments for individual female wrestlers.

However, most girls who want to wrestle have to do it against boys — one-sided athletic departments leave them no other option.

Bailo said wrestling is a long way from the gender-separate sport he and his community feel it should be.

The sport is not state-sanctioned into two genders, something that he said would help attract many more female student-athletes.

For the Central Valley team, the idea of a girls wrestling team may be far off — but the team's female population is growing.

A new challenge

Moore, 16, is fighting for her competitive life in the 120-pound ranks as a Falcon.

Her interest in the sport came from her friends.

"I hang out with more guys than girls. ... We'd just end up wrestling and messing around," Moore said. She said that she'd usually win the friendly matches, which gave her confidence — whether that confidence is false doesn't matter to her.

"I'm not sure if they just let me beat them," she said. Regardless, Moore found she had a passion for wrestling, and approached Central Valley coach Matt Hunsaker about joining the team. She was the lone female on last year's roster but helped recruit three other teammates this season.

Moore loves wrestling for the same reason she loves spending time with those boys.

"Guys are more aggressive. ... I kind of like it with the guys. There's no drama," Moore said.

Invisible lines

Wrestling has a lot of key words that describe the path to success within the sport.

Toughness. Conditioning. Humility. But drama? Not hardly.

The last thing Moore or any of her female teammates want is special treatment. It's important to her to prove she and other girls can be just as tough and hard-nosed as the guys.

"We're all really outgoing and nuts; we don't really care about other people's opinions," she said.

There's a common misconception that the worst sexism in coed wrestling would come in the form of boys picking on girls. In reality, the girls said, it's boys refusing to give them a proper match.

"There was a guy that, every time he touched me, he'd say, 'Sorry,'" Moore said.

"I'd honestly prefer somebody who's really cocky. It's a dominant sport. It's a sport that proves that girls can do what guys can do."

And Moore welcomes the lighthearted teasing from the other Falcons, treatment that creates a sense of equality between the boys and girls on the roster.

"It's always just really chill," she said.

When Moore first showed interest in being a wrestler, Hunsaker let her know right away that her gender wouldn't be an issue — for better or worse.

"My coach said, 'As soon as you step on the mat, you're a guy,'" she said.

Moore wouldn't have it any other way.

She doesn't ask for any sympathy. She dislocated her nose in an early January practice and was back on the mat soon afterward.

More than a fighter

Not many high school athletes can say they've dabbled in cheerleading and wrestling. Both are archetypes of gender — smiling, spirited dancing and celebrating pitted against brutal, unforgiving battles that often lead to injuries like Moore's, at the least.

Cheerleading has been part of Moore's routine much longer than combat on the mat.

"I've been in it pretty much my whole life," Moore said. "I love dancing, I love cheering, I love staying out Friday nights and going to games; it's just fun for me."

She said it can be tough, though, transitioning from cheerleading where she's a flier — the girl who is tossed in the air and caught — to wrestling, where she tries to make herself as heavy as possible every match.

Ashleigh Speer, also a junior, also 16, and also a cheerleader, wrestles for Central Valley, too.

"Bethany kind of recruited me; she wanted a friend to go with," Speer said. "I said I'd do it with her."

What started as something to do has transformed into a lifestyle for Speer and the other girls on the team.

"It challenges you," she said. "It changes every single day."

Hanging with the boys wasn't easy at first, Speer said, but it grew on her quickly.

"At first it was kind of iffy," she said, "but after you do it a couple days, they're kind of like your big brothers."

The girls who cheerlead with Moore and Speer don't find the wrestling strange, Moore said, mostly because it fits her personality pretty well.

"I've never really been the super-girly, dress-up-every-day, makeup kind of girl," Moore said. "They're not really surprised; they kind of just cheer me on."

Family tradition

Unlike the other girls on the team, one Falcon got onto the mat because of her heritage.

Amanda Castle, another 16-year-old junior, wrestles mostly because it's in her blood.

"I have a lot of family that wrestled; I wanted to prove that not only guys can do it," she said.

One of her family members, cousin Brandon Castle, is a 15-year-old freshman at Central Valley.

Brandon, like most of the guys on the team, has no problem putting gender aside to muster the intensity needed for wrestling. He's never had to face a girl in an official match, sure, but he never holds back in practice against the four Falcon girls, he said, nor would he against a female opponent in a match that counts.

"I'd still go in there and tear their head off just like a guy," he said. "I'm not going to hold back just because they're a girl."

Brandon said he's encountered a few boys who forfeited against a girl or who didn't feel right wrestling one. He doesn't understand why it matters.

"I'd say the majority are like me. I've seen maybe two or three that didn't want to wrestle a girl, that's about it," he said. "I don't even know what their problem is, though."

Athletic roles redefined

At one practice, it was obvious that the boys on the wrestling team provide no favors or coddling for their female competitors — proven when sophomore Andrea Mitchell, who had to spar with one of the male Falcons throughout practice, took some loud, thudding takedowns.

Mitchell, like Moore, has no grandiose dreams of wrestling or of trying to help kick-start a dramatic movement in gender and athletics. She began for a simple reason.

"It sounded crazy, so I wanted to try it," Mitchell said. "Girls don't usually wrestle on the high school team."

Mitchell said the stereotypical image of girls in sports — too weak-bodied to participate in a combat sport like wrestling — is something she loves to help disprove.

"Boys make us sound wimpy," Mitchell said. "They make it sound like girls could never do it 'Oh, really? I'll prove you wrong.'"

Mitchell, 15, said the four Falcon girls on the team joined in a kind of "chain reaction" — with one influencing the other until Central Valley had one of the biggest female wrestler populations around. She's as surprised as anyone.

"It's crazy how our world has evolved," she said. Mitchell added that she's friends with Shasta High football's place-kicker Ellie Oliver — another game-changing girl playing a traditionally male sport.

Mitchell, like Moore, said the boys, both on her team and others, have treated them exactly like any other wrestlers, for the most part.

Moore got poison oak, and without a hike or any known direct contact with the plant, she has no idea why she became afflicted. The rash could have easily rubbed off on other wrestlers or become more irritated, so during the week between the regular season and the Northern Athletic League championships, Moore was done for the year.

Her season, though, ended on the highest of notes. Moore, previously winless for the season, earned a pin in a 120-pound bout against a Paradise High boy.

When she won, Moore said, she was overcome with what had just happened.

"Oh, I was stoked," she said. "It's a good way to end my year."

Coach's dilemma

Despite his respect for the four girls on his team, Central Valley coach Hunsaker said he has struggled to adjust. Hunsaker has been coaching about 20 years, and he's no stranger to girls wrestling.

However, experience doesn't always make things easier.

"It's hard anytime, as a man, a girl starts crying it makes it a little different," Hunsaker said. " It's tough on the girls, and it's tough on some guys. Physically, most girls can't stay with the guys."

But Hunsaker said Moore, Castle, Mitchell and Speer have persevered in a big way.

After one practice, he said, a couple of the girls — whom he wouldn't name — did punishment conditioning for showing up late, a chastisement that is the same for anybody on the team.

"They both were crying by the time they were done," Hunsaker said. " I said, 'Hey, there's the door; if you don't like it walk out the door.' They hung in there."

Many of the girls who come into wrestling haven't been conditioned to handle the sport, he said.

"Some of them have never been pushed physically and emotionally," Hunsaker said. "There's no sport that's as tough physically or mentally as wrestling."

If he had to compete against a girl while he was still wrestling, he wouldn't have known what to do.

"I couldn't even imagine," Hunsaker said. "There's a lot of things that have changed in sports and society that I never thought I'd have to deal with as a coach."

Because of that, Hunsaker said, the eventual segregation of wrestling into boys and girls categories would be best. Girls' flexibility can be just as good if not better than the boys, he said, but the strength contrast makes most matches unfair.

The heart of the coed issue

Bailo — one of the major proponents of girls wrestling in the history of the sport — thinks girls cannot fully appreciate and excel within wrestling unless it is divided by gender.

"Absolutely, I started this USGWA stuff for that reason," Bailo said. "If they wrestle against boys, their likelihood of success is not very high. They can't compete just because the muscle mass of the boys is too great, and the strength is what matters most — they just don't have a chance."

Separate girls wrestling would put parents at ease, too.

"There is a lot of concern for their daughters to be in compromising positions (with boys)," Bailo said. " I understand that."

Bailo said it's up to individual states and sections to sanction gender-separate wrestling.

The popularity among local girls may be growing slowly. But for now, they'll have to make their mark against the boys.

Coaches, too, are challenged to incorporate girls into the sport.

"When I was a high-school coach, if I didn't have a 103-pounder, I'd drag one out of the halls. We don't treat the girls like that," Bailo said. The approach, he said, is more often "'If you come out, that's fine. We really don't want you, and we really don't need you.'"

Until girls wrestling becomes integrated as a common high school sport, those like Moore will treasure every victory.

"Oh my gosh, it was so exciting," she said of her season-ending pin. " I was jumping off the walls, bragging to everybody."